It's Aja! I'm a culture reporter and co-creator of the Kaleidotrope podcast. Queer / Genderqueer. They/them or she/her, whatevs.
(Website | About Me | AO3 | Ask anything!)
In a different era of Russian fandom, Zhenya volunteered as a Ficbook moderator. She emphasized how different things used to be before the crackdowns in her own country. “When I was a Ficbook mod, I was a teen,” she said. “There weren't any threats of censorship in sight; media and people were so much more free to do whatever they wanted: nobody translated gay couples into cousins, Verka Serduchka (an amazing drag queen) was very much one of the most popular artists among both kids and adults, the process to transition was so much easier than in most places around the world, and at some point I actually thought we were moving towards allowing gay marriage.”
These days, she worries that even posting to sites hosted externally might be criminalized—that, for example, “people who pay Ficbook to promote their fics are putting themselves at risk.”
In our latest, @bookshop reports on growing creative censorship—and criminalization—around the world, from Australia to China to the U.S.
In Russia, a writer was recently sentenced to 18 months of forced labor for writing Stray Kids fanfiction. In this piece, Aja talks to Russian fans about the current climate of fear for many fans there.
Read or listen to an audio version:
Governments around the world are censoring—and criminalizing—the currents in which fanworks flow.
Governments around the world are censoring—and criminalizing—the currents in which fanworks flow.
Our latest is live! ⚖️ @bookshop reports on the increasing criminalization of creativity around the world—especially queer and/or erotic works, and including fanworks. Recent rulings against an Australian erotica writer and a Russian fic writer, the confirmation that danmei writer Mo Xiang Tong Xiu was imprisoned for her work, and growing repression in the U.S., where many global platforms for creative works are based, are all signals of just how worrying the current climate is:
With a barrage of new and expanded laws plus harsher enforcement of existing ones, governments around the globe are criminalizing more and more forms of creative expression. It’s no longer far-fetched or hyperbolic to say that at any given moment, depending on what country you’re in and what government you’re up against, individual works of fiction—including fanworks—could be criminalized for being queer, or pornographic, or generally deviant.
How far the law typically extends seems to be entirely arbitrary, but in recent years, we’ve seen regressive censorship and punishment nipping at the heels of fanworks. Online platforms and payment processors then often comply with these laws by instituting sweeping content bans, further marginalizing women, queer and trans people, and sex-positive communities—the currents in which fandom flows.
Read the article or listen to an audio version via the link above!
Highly recommend this piece!! Aja does a fantastic job threading a pretty tricky needle here: some of these crackdowns are against fan creators while others are against creators working in commercial areas, but they're all coming from the same ideological place—a dangerous climate has been brewing in "the currents in which fandom flows."
I also think it's notable how there are so many parallel cases and laws in quite different kinds of governments: this piece cites cases and incidents from Australia, Russia, Italy, China, the U.S. and its customs/borders with Canada and Ireland, along with a host of other countries where sites like AO3 are banned. Plus we're all on the global internet, much of which is hosted here; these are global problems, and they're largely trending in the same deeply troubling direction.
Governments around the world are censoring—and criminalizing—the currents in which fanworks flow.
Our latest is live! ⚖️ @bookshop reports on the increasing criminalization of creativity around the world—especially queer and/or erotic works, and including fanworks. Recent rulings against an Australian erotica writer and a Russian fic writer, the confirmation that danmei writer Mo Xiang Tong Xiu was imprisoned for her work, and growing repression in the U.S., where many global platforms for creative works are based, are all signals of just how worrying the current climate is:
With a barrage of new and expanded laws plus harsher enforcement of existing ones, governments around the globe are criminalizing more and more forms of creative expression. It’s no longer far-fetched or hyperbolic to say that at any given moment, depending on what country you’re in and what government you’re up against, individual works of fiction—including fanworks—could be criminalized for being queer, or pornographic, or generally deviant.
How far the law typically extends seems to be entirely arbitrary, but in recent years, we’ve seen regressive censorship and punishment nipping at the heels of fanworks. Online platforms and payment processors then often comply with these laws by instituting sweeping content bans, further marginalizing women, queer and trans people, and sex-positive communities—the currents in which fandom flows.
Read the article or listen to an audio version via the link above!
The laws I learned about while researching this piece had me routinely going on flabbergasted rants to anyone who would listen. Fight for free speech and free expression wherever you are, because even in nominally safe countries, it's worse than you think.
Recovering from the Game of Thrones content mines.
I enjoyed this week's @fansplaining longread so much!! I had reached out to my longtime former colleague Michelle, who mentioned casually what burnout she'd experienced from her long years in the trenches of Westeros. @elizabethminkel and @lincodega and I were all like, ooh. Would you like to write about that?
And so she did, with care and the thousand-yard stare that all of us—Game of Thrones fans and journalists—all know too well:
After a certain point, Game of Thrones became critic-proof: no matter what anyone said or how many narrative shortcuts the show took, people would continue to tune in.
That’s not to say that people weren’t critical of Game of Thrones during its heyday. Thoughtful critiques of the show’s portrayal of sex and violence, its depictions of female characters, its use of rape as a plot device, the total lack of diversity, and the lack of women involved in the production existed from the start, as did bad-faith actors who used “book accuracy” to justify a mix of media illiteracy and abhorrent opinions.
Yet the further the series progressed, the more defensive the creative team became, and the more they blamed dissatisfied fans for interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. Other fans created increasingly outlandish theories to justify dragon-sized plot holes. Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would make character or plot choices that fans believed were responses to criticism—claims the showrunners would then deny.
Michelle walks us through 13 years of fandom passion, burnout, and rejuvenation, while also walking us through a decade of volatility for journalism. Definitely don't miss this one.
Thai “Girls Love” thrives on real-life star pairings—for better and for worse.
I am so, so happy about this week's Fansplaining longread, which is a gorgeous, fun, complex deep dive into the Thai GL genre and its thorny relationship to its fandom:
At a time when many entertainment companies still viewed GL as financially risky and too niche, Idol Factory, the company behind GAP, was the first to prove that GL could generate serious revenue through the main couple’s ancillary fanmeets, brand endorsements, and merchandise, beyond just the show itself.
But as the industry continues to expand, I have witnessed growing conversation about whether the very thing that helped the genre thrive—fan service and shipping culture—could now be stifling its creative growth. Some fans worry that the industry has become so dependent on fan service that good storytelling is no longer prioritized.
To me, this piece is an ideal example of fandom journalism. It introduces us to a corner of fandom that's relatively niche but rapidly expanding. The author, Tabby Kibugi, frames the piece from her perspective as a GL fan herself, letting us partake of her joy and excitement. But then she steps back and approaches every aspect of the fandom and the genre from a critical lens, while also bringing us reported perspectives from other fans. She touches on issues that are relevant not just to GL and BL fans but to WLW audiences, queer fandom and RPF fans in general, and Asian drama fandom more broadly. Her entire approach is respectful but sharp-eyed. It's such a good read. I learned so much (and I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out for In Love Forever when it drops later this month).
This is the first and only time I've seen a US media outlet engage critically with Thai GL. It's important work, and it makes me so proud to be a part of this project! I hope we can keep bringing you all so many more stories like this.
Our latest piece is live! The great @annejamison (who you might know as the author of Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World) writes about the recent Good Omens finale as a sort of metatextual gesture to fans—and especially fanfiction:
And so, May 13th found me awake at 1 A.M., watching the series finale through bleary and teary eyes. Despite widespread sorrow at the glittering yet gutting conclusion for our heroes, 6,000+–year-old angel and demon Aziraphale and Crowley, I thought it was the most heartfelt and validating love letter to fanfiction I’ve seen come out of a commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, this message got tangled up with the show’s other unique ambitions: to save itself from its author—not Pratchett, the other one—and restore the Good Omens legacy to its fans.
Click through to read the piece or listen to an audio version! 💞
I edited this piece and it is SO enjoyable! So far in this new era of Fansplaining, I think what I've been happiest with is seeing just how engaging and highly readable and entertaining all of these very different perspectives on fandom are. Anne's take is essentially that the Good Omens finale was a metatextual argument for embracing transformative storytelling over proprietary authorship and even a single authoritative canon, and even if you don't watch the show, reading about how all of this came about (and a little bit about the fallout) is fascinating and moving. And warmly, lovingly told.
I have been following this account for something like 15 years and for that entire timespan, literally every time i log into this hellsite, it's posted something that takes my breath away
For fans in Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, “uncringing” non-English fanfiction is an endeavor in decolonialism.
Our latest piece is live! The brilliant Soila Kenya writes about the dominance of English in fandom and especially fanfiction spaces, and why for her and the fellow fans she interviewed from Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, this is partly about the global dominance of English-language pop culture, but especially about the legacies of colonialism:
The deep psychological imprints of this language disparity remain. And therefore, when I encountered fanfiction, it didn’t even occur to me that there were fanfics written in any language but English, let alone Swahili or any of the 42 indigenous languages in Kenya.
Click through to read the whole piece or listen to a full audio version! And if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a (free) member or especially a paying subscriber—we want to commission more pieces from Soila and other smart writers and we need your help to pay them!
(As a reminder, we have a discount rate for anyone who wants it, no questions asked—if you're a student, educator, un/underemployed, have a lower income, or literally any other reason, just email [email protected] and we're happy to provide!)
This piece is SO good—absolutely worth your time to read or listen (I always love hearing the writers read their work, but since the focus of this piece is language, it was especially great hearing Soila read it). If you enjoy it, please share widely: I know what Soila writes here will resonate with so many people across fandom.
Just seconding the love for this piece! It really is SO tremendously worth your time.
Soila was one of my favorite WorldCon panelists last year and here she's written a really thoughtful but also extremely enjoyable treatise on what can sometimes be the "cringe" effect of reading—let alone writing!—fics in your native tongue.
I found this piece so engrossing, delightfully wry, provocative, and educational. It makes me so happy and proud to be a part of this era of Fansplaining.
The three things you need to build a juggernaut fanfic community: popularity, modularity, and intimacy.
It's our launch day—so of course we had to start things off with a bang. 😎
Editor (& footnote lover) @lincodega goes deep on The Pitt and the elements that make it ripe for fanfiction. (With a little critique of all those recent bad Pitt fandom pieces along the way.) This piece will appeal to Pitt fans & non-Pitt fanfiction people alike!
This is at the heart of transformative fandom, and is a huge part of what makes The Pitt so good at rewarding fans who care enough to create the fandom. It gives opportunities for people to imagine a text greater than 15 episodes a year. It’s a heady mix that has pushed fandom to clock into their own fanfic shift after every episode and get to work. A thousand fics a week don’t write themselves.
Read or listen to an audio version via the link above! Like all the articles on our new site, it's locked to Fansplaining members only—once you sign up, you can read this one (and our whole archive) for free! (We will not do anything with your email address; a lot of indie pubs do this now to keep from being AI-scraped.)
It's LAUNCH DAY!!!! Guys go read Lin's article on The Pitt and its thriving, zany fandom, not only for the astute insights on fandom and the way The Pitt's specific characteristics function as catnip for transformative fans, but also and especially for THE FOOTNOTES.
Highlight: "Anne Rice is infamous for sending cease-and-desist letters to fans who produced fanwork, and is often cited as one of the factors that drove fandom culture 'underground' in the early aughts. With her death five years ago, I fear we lost an apex predator in the space."
Start the tape—er, COUNTDOWN. Fansplaining relaunches in THREE (3) days, and we're celebrating by sharing some of the adorable new fandom fans we commissioned from the brilliant @redgoldsparks!
Get ready—Fansplaining: The Publication goes live on Wednesday, April 29th! ✨
The countdown continues! Fansplaining is relaunching in TWO (2) days. Today's countdown fan is a danmei-inspired one—a request, of course, from our editor @bookshop. 🥰
Okay I have things I should be seeing to but I couldn't help myself. In case you, like me, have not read all of these stories and would like to be amongst the lucky 10,000 today:
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers*
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson**
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard O'Connell
The Nameless City by HP Lovecraft
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
Honorable Mention from the comments/reblogs:
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
*note: this is actually a collection of short stories and clocks in at about 72k words
**Originally published in the New Yorker in 1948; interestingly, the New Yorker still has this story archived on their website BEHIND A PAYWALL. CAN YOU IMAGINE.
"All Summer in a Day" is the correct answer. I actually didn't read the short story first, I watched the PBS WonderWorks adaptation of it in the 80s, when I was way too young to be that traumatized by a story of bullying and isolation and climate disaster, thanks, Ray
Hi Aja! Have you ever written anything about the Heated Rivalry fandom, or know of any good writing on it? It's been such a huge deal lately, and I don't know much about it, but would be really interested in hearing a rundown of its influence on fandom overall. I keep hearing about the shockwaves it's been making with its popularity, and how ao3 is being affected, but no one I know is actually into it!
Hi, hello!
You're in luck! Not only do I know of at least one very good piece on Heated Rivalry, it's by my good friend and longtime colleague Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, aka @hellotailor, written for @fansplaining, which is relaunching next week (Wednesday! April 29th!) as a proper media outlet that's dedicated to exactly this kind of writing! I'm very excited to be part of the editorial team that's making this happen, along with @elizabethminkel, @lincodega, and Gavia, who's agreed to join us as staff writer!
You can check out all the info on the Fansplaining launch here! and our update with the launch date here!
And check out Gav's piece on Heated Rivalry here: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/the-success-of-heated-rivalry-should-not-be-a-surprise
Gav's article looks more at HR's relationship to romance tradition in the lead-up to its release, rather than its influence on fandom in the aftermath, but we will undoubtedly be publishing pieces on the aftermath, too! So stay with us and support @fansplaining's transition and look for more Heated Rivalry coverage near you!
Hey y'all! So I know I haven't posted much lately BUT college has been crazy. And related to that, for one of my classes I'm doing a study on the relationship between time within the greater fandom community and understanding of fanfiction-related jargon. Below I have the link to the survey which will just have three multiple choice questions relating to your relationship to fandom and then a list of 15 terms to define if you know them.
Please reblog this or otherwise share the survey link with anyone you think might be interested so I can have as large of a sample size as possible for this. The form will be open until April 24th.
Thank you all so much!
(and yes, I will post the data when I get it all collected for all you fellow nerds)
A survey to determine the relationship between the understanding of fandom jargon and the time one has been in the fandom community
How many people’s most beloved childhood stuffed animals are actually teddy bears, like I feel like that’s a thing someone made up. Reblog this and put what your longest owned and/or favorite stuffed animal as a child was in the tags, inquiring minds want to know
We’re relaunching as a weekly publication featuring reporting, analysis, criticism, personal essays, and much more—all by, for, and about fa
🎉THE BIG NEWS IS HERE! 🎉
This bit of the article sums it up best [emphasis added]:
You can probably see where this is going—by the end of 2025, it seemed pretty obvious to me, anyway. While I love the podcast format, there’s a gaping hole in the media landscape right now: a huge pool of talented writers with nowhere to publish and pay them for their work, and a large body of readers who want sharp reporting and analysis on fannish topics, or culture writing about properties beyond a few blockbuster franchises. A decade ago, the mainstream media was interested in publishing good work on fandom (even if they still published a lot of bad); now, it’s just endless paeans to the Dramione pull-to-publish novels, or 100,000 badly researched “Why do women love M/M romance?” pieces. (Toss in a few lists of AO3 links and call it a day!)
This spring, Fansplaining will relaunch as a full weekly publication, featuring reporting, analysis, criticism, personal essays, and much more, all under our longtime strapline: “By, for, and about fandom.”
I've been working with @lincodega & @bookshop to plan the next chapter of Fansplaining: a full fan culture publication with a wide range of formats, expanding from our classic reporting and analysis to include criticism, reviews, comics, art, and much more. (Including some short-run and one-off podcasts!)
Click on the link above to read (or listen to) all the details; there's also a sign-up box at the bottom to get emails about our (re)launch.
I'm so so excited for this! Click the link for more details! I'm looking forward to everyone's pitches! If you aren't sure what might be a good fit, don't hesitate to ask any of us! Yay!
Obviously there's been...a lot going on this year 🙃, so if you don't work in the media industry, you may not have been paying attention the utter decimation of culture journalism in 2025. The industry at large has been hemorrhaging jobs for a while now, but this year, it truly felt like the nail in the coffin for cultural coverage: sections and even whole publications completely gutted, legendary critics and journalists laid off, newcomers and longtime writers alike left with almost nowhere to publish save individual newsletters and blogs.
Even if you didn't know this was happening, you're feeling it. There's simply very little culture coverage out there today—and with a niche like fan culture, there's almost nothing left in the mainstream, with what little that does get published often reverting to an older style of exploitation or just kind of...guessing? at things that have been well-researched and documented. It's bad out there!
That's why we were incredibly grateful for Fansplaining's patrons, whose continued support helped us publish a fandom-related longread every month in 2025. Some criticism, some reporting, some personal essays, these talented writers produced some incredible work for us this year. In case you missed any of them, you'll find links to all of them below the cut. As a reminder, all of our articles also have an audio version recorded by the writer, if you prefer listening to reading.
One final note: there are BIG PLANS brewing for Fansplaining in 2026. If you like the work we published this year, get ready!!! We should be announcing more about that in the early days of January.
And now, without further ado, Fansplaining's 2025 wrap-up:
Blake’s 7 fans and actors mixed regularly at cons and on the pages of zines—until an anonymous letter changed everything.
In January, Lena Barkin started us out strong with a deep dive into the Slash Wars, a formative fandom event centered around the Blake's 7 con and fic scene in the 1980s and 90s. Fan-creator interaction, RPF, commercial fandom vs the gift economy, a cult British sci-fi favorite—this piece has it all!
Marvel wants fans to care about lore without thinking too deeply about themes and emotions—the things that brought them to this fandom in th
February saw the latest installment of the Captain America branch of the MCU, with Sam Wilson stepping into the title role. @hellotailor returned to Fansplaining with an incisive piece of criticism about how the film failed both the character and fans—the latter of whom the franchise seems to be relying on for both nostalgic goodwill and an encyclopedic knowledge of their dozens of titles, while offering them little in return.
Complaints about historical accuracy and acting quality are often dog-whistles: some fans only want to see white actors—and white history—on
In March, one of the expert guests from our Race & Fandom series, Amanda-Rae Prescott, brought us a thorough history of racism in period drama fandom, from the almost wholly white casts of earlier decades to both racebent and racially conscious casting in the modern era (culminating, of course, with Bridgerton).
Amid blurry boundaries between fic, celebrity fandom, and conspiracy theories, how real person fiction evolved from forbidden to mainstream
Our April piece was another history: this time of RPF. Sacha Judd traces the shifting attitudes around the practice, and how social media has helped collapse boundaries that make it more exposed (and possibly more controversial) than ever. "We’ve seen a full life-cycle in the acceptance of RPF," she writes, "from something that was once seen as a completely taboo behavior to widespread tolerance and back again."
From photo cards to video art installations, a tour through a recent exhibition showcasing K-pop fans’ communal creativity and cross-cultura
In May, we published a new-to-us format: the virtual art exhibit! Toronto-based curators Rea McNamara and Bo Shin walked us through I came to ruin you: The Collecting Practices of K-pop Fandoms, which was on display at York University in the spring.
For the admins of the Starsky & Hutch Fiction Archive, preserving fanworks and fannish community go hand in hand.
As we headed into summer, we went back to old-school fandom. Jay Castello reported our June piece on the still-active Starsky & Hutch Fiction Archive, and how its mods found the onscreen friendship of the titular characters mirrored their decades-old friendships within the fandom.
Fansplaining’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, “The Fandom Advantage,” featuring creators of TV, comics, novels, and more.
In July, Fansplaining returned to the place where it was born ten years prior (!): San Diego Comic-Con. This year's panel, "The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers," featured insights from panelists who came up/are still in fandom, but have also worked on fan-favorite titles like SPN, IWTV, The Witcher, Percy Jackson, Star Wars, and much more. Here, you can watch the full video in addition to audio and a transcript.
Writing for Star Wars challenges me to interrogate fandom power dynamics—and figure out where I fall in a rapidly shifting landscape.
One of those SDCC panelists was Tessa Gratton, who's written Star Wars novels in addition to original work (and fic!). Our August piece was their thoughtful essay on navigating the complicated intersections between these spheres. "My most successful moments have come when I acknowledge not only the shifting dynamics between fan and pro writing, but how that shift relates to my queerness—and to fandom as queer space in opposition to power."
Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters has seen massive mainstream success in the U.S. What does that mean for real K-pop artists and their fans?
In September, @bookshop was one of those experienced writers who left a mainstream institution with dwindling culture coverage—so of course we immediately asked if they wanted to write for Fansplaining. The result was this deeply researched analysis of the ascendant Kpop Demon Hunters fandom, and its intersections (or lack thereof) with actual K-pop fandom.
Mary Sues are literary tools like any other. My new comic, Mary Sue, interrogates the continued bias against these characters—and brings one
Another of our SDCC 2025 panelists, @megfitz89, published the first issue of her fanfiction-oriented comic, Mary Sue, in early October. We were lucky enough to be able to feature a few panels from that issue—and get Meghan to write an accompanying essay about the term "Mary Sue" and the genesis of the series.
Aaaand Tumblr apparently has a cap of 10 with these expanded link-preview modules, so check out the reblog for the final pair of stories!
